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"So."

The exchange up until this point had been wordless. He'd shown up unannounced on Mimsy's doorstep around midnight, holding a bottle of vodka and looking like the infirmary was a little hasty in discharging him. Maybe they'd been hasty in discharging her too. They both looked like hell, and they exchanged a vacant look of recognition before she actually let him in.

Lucky poured two short glasses in the kitchen and they downed them there in total silence save for the clink as they set them down again. By the time Mimsy was halfway through hers, he was already pouring himself another, hands shaking slightly. It hardly felt like any time had passed between the Delta rescue mission and now. It was surreal to be here, to be himself, and not -- no. He had to break the silence before he got caught up thinking about Creation again.

"So," he had spoken, simply to fill the empty space. Something, anything to distract from the downward spiral until the alcohol kicked in. "That was your mother."

"Sort of," he mumbled into his glass. "I got the impression that she, uh, liked the number nine. Looked after some of the college students there, too. That's about it."

Normally he would have been more apologetic about stumbling onto a sore subject. It was pretty clear from how uncomfortable Mimsy was, of all people. He looked at her and felt - nothing. His mind had just been taken apart and put back together again like a jigsaw puzzle - and the experience left him small and empty and alone. He leaned against the counter and watched her squirm with the same vacant and unhelpful expression he'd been wearing since he'd first come in.

"If you're asking me about the whole operation," he spoke the last word with an almost tangible disdain, running his thumb halfway around the rim of the glass and back again, "I think we didn't have a chance from the start. Unprepared is an understatement. We already proved how unprepared we were for the virus. We shouldn't have survived... that."

He leaned down a little and scratched his leg where hundreds of thorns had been hooked into it.

"I can't stop thinking about it, though," he admitted, with the first sign of hesitance in his voice. He downed whatever remained in his glass before venturing any farther, and coughed. "You saw it, right? The vines - no, the network -"

Her comment - or maybe her inability to stay upright - got a laugh out of him. He reached out and tried to steady her, feeling somewhat dizzy himself.

"Forget about her. She doesn’t have to be family unless you want her to be. And you don’t sound like you do," he ventured as he let go of her arm. It was a bit uncharacteristic of him to talk about family - that is, family that wasn’t her. He knocked back the rest of his drink and set the glass aside. “And you’re not a monster. For that, or... anything else."

"Huh? Oh, yes, we talked, but -" The alcohol was already taking effect - he realized mid-sentence why it might not have been a good idea to go into any further detail. "I didn't learn any more about her than you did."

"You know what I mean," he protested, placing a few fingers against his temple. It was next to impossible to put it into words. But if he couldn’t tell Mimsy, who could he talk to about this? Maybe she would understand where he was coming from. “Saw, felt, were, whatever. I just wonder if it was a mistake, to be separated from it. You know?”

He didn’t wait to find out if she did. It was the self-conscious babbling of someone desperately defending something they knew, on some level, was probably insane.

“It was kind of a relief, actually. Not having to be myself any more. We - it - had a purpose, a real purpose. I understood what I was for - my place in the universe. We’re - we're so small, you know? It was so much bigger than we could possibly grasp like we are now. I remember looking down at myself there and really understanding how little it mattered that I ever existed. But it makes sense. God, I wish I could remember everything I saw. All those memories... knowledge. But you can’t pour the whole ocean into one cup. I just feel what's missing.” He picked up the glass beside him and stared at it thoughtfully. Looking for more words to keep his train of thought moving before it could be derailed. “It’s like I was blind all my life, everyone was, and then, for one moment, someone came along and opened my eyes. And because of them, I could see all the things I couldn’t have even imagined - light and color and textures and distances. I finally understood the world better than I ever had before. And then they - they blinded me again, and left me in that same darkness with nothing but the memory of that brief glimpse of the world. How could I just forget? Why would I ever want to go back to being this?”

He gestured vaguely at himself, then reached over to slowly pour another glass of vodka.